


75% Truth

by FereldanDorkMage



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Green Arrow - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Set in S1E5 of arrow, Short, kind of a
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-06 23:53:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1877214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FereldanDorkMage/pseuds/FereldanDorkMage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A solid seventy-five percent of what he said was true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	75% Truth

Oliver Queen said he didn't sleep. He said that he barely ate. He claimed he could barely sign his name, and he ended it by saying "let alone aim a bow and arrow."

And he used his words to defend himself, because showing anyone his scars had taken vulnerability, and he should have expected weakness to come back at him.

He should have waited for this to blow up in face. 

A solid seventy-five percent what he said was true. Both with the statement and everyday life.

Lies are inherently complicated things, and he didn't like over-complication.

He didn't sleep, and when he did he had nightmares. Nightmares about his dad's self-inflicted death. About Ashley dying. About being tortured. About losing everything, his family, and the life he just barely got back, even if it wasn't quite the same. About his work in the city failing, and about the people he had left dying like everyone else he loved.

He didn't eat because he couldn't bring himself to do it. He barely ate on the island, and eating so excessively seemed like a waste. Blasphemy against survival. Let alone the fact that he was sick from the nightmares. And then he was sick from the blood. Fighting for life was so ingrained, and sitting down to a table full of other men and women's labour felt  _wrong._ So he avoided it.

And he just didn't see the point of trying to survive anyways, at least not past the mission.

And signing his name?

Why would he be able to do that with ease. He never had any kind of real conversation on that god-forsaken island. Nothing that casually threw in his name like it was nothing. Nicknames like Oli became something that were obsolete and useless in his new world. The only thing that mattered was breathing, and you never had to breathe out a name to make it to your next morning. It was strange to hear it as much as he did, let alone have his hand write it in loopy letters he used to be oh-so familiar with.

But then he said he couldn't aim a bow.

That was the lie.

The arrows were his own survival.

To breathe in, pull the arrow against the string so that it was just taut enough, aim, breathe out and shoot in one fluid heart beat, well, that was second nature. Hell, it was practically first.

Once one has learned, you do not forget how to survive. You can't after the struggle it takes, and Oliver Queen, well one could say he had learned, even if saying that he had merely learned would be a sad understatement. 

And if he was damaged? Well that didn't mean he would ever give up the hood. Not without swinging hard enough to take down someone who deserved it with him.

**Author's Note:**

> What does a girl have to do to get a comment around here?


End file.
